About 300 Nissan workers gathered in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat on Wednesday afternoon to protest against a proposed redundancy plan, known as an ERE, affecting 211 employees across three Catalan centres. The demonstration took place in the Barcelona area, where the company’s local operations are under pressure from the plan.
The cuts include 110 jobs at the El Prat de Llobregat parts centre, 86 at the technical centre in Barcelona’s Zona Franca, and 15 at the flexible areas centre, also in El Prat. Protesters carried banners reading, “It’s not an ERE, it’s a covert closure”, and chanted against the redundancy plan and company management.
The protest followed a meeting between unions and Nissan, with mediation from the Catalan government’s Department of Labour, which ended without progress. Raúl Ocón, a CC.OO. delegate for Nissan in El Prat, said the company had not reduced the number of affected workers or put forward new proposals on compensation or re-employment.
Mònica Figueres, general secretary of the CC.OO. union for Nissan’s Catalan centres, said the company intends to move the El Prat parts centre’s operations to the Netherlands, where Nissan already has another European parts centre. She said the move is being presented as internal reorganisation, not as a response to economic problems or losses at the Catalan site.
Miguel Ruiz, general secretary of SIGEN-USOC, said Nissan’s decision is based on a consultant’s report. He said the same consultant was involved in the closure of the Zona Franca factory and secondary Nissan plants in 2021, and argued that the report is being used to justify a covert closure of the parts plant, which is the most affected site in the ERE, with 110 redundancies out of 122 staff.
Negotiations remain blocked, and both sides are due to meet again next Tuesday with mediation from the Department of Labour. For more Catalonia business and labour coverage, see our news page.